


The secret they shared

by MDnata



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: A/B/O Dynamics but not in the traditional sense, Alpha Lydia, Alpha Negan (Walking Dead), Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Beta Daryl Dixon, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 10:27:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29823531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MDnata/pseuds/MDnata
Summary: Judith finds out about a secret shared between Negan and Daryl, one they'd kept hidden even when it cost lives.
Relationships: Daryl Dixon & Judith Grimes, Daryl Dixon & Lydia, Daryl Dixon & Negan, Daryl Dixon/Negan, Judith Grimes & Negan, Negan & Lydia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	1. The Monster in the Basement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Judith has a guestion for Negan.

  
Judith had heard stories about monsters that lurked under the bed or in the closet and were only seen by little children when they’d crawled under the covers at night and the lights had been turned off.  
  
Her mother wasn’t the one who told her about them, that had been someone else – and he hadn’t exactly been talking to Judith about it either. She’d just happened to overhear a conversation between an older boy and his little sister.  
  
Judith had been curious to know more but hadn’t dared to approach the siblings. She carried a sword on her back and her father’s gun on her hip and sometimes other kids cowered away from her. Even the older ones (sometimes especially the older ones). She wasn’t sure why but she tried not to think about it too much.  
  
Still, she had been curious.  
  
Why were the monsters under the bed? Were they hiding from something? And what about the closet then. She’d seen a walker or two sometimes stuck inside of a closet but that’s about it. It was useless to hide in a closet, unless you were ready to fight your way out if need be.  
  
She was older now and understood that the monsters the boy had talked about had just been his own imagination - or more accurately, the little sister’s imagination. The boy had been trying to spook her.  
  
He was gone now, flushed away in the fever wave that hit the community early on last spring, along with a couple of other children and one older woman called Nana Rose. It was a sad way to start the summer, in Judith’s opinion, with one little silver lining. One precious little thing. It had drawn Uncle Daryl back to Alexandria, if only for a moment.  
  
Judith had asked about the monsters from her mother, none the less. She knew they weren’t real in the way walkers were but she was interested to know what had prompted the boy to think about them in the first place. Her mother had said the only monster lurking inside Alexandria’s walls was the one locked up in the basement and Judith was to steer clear from him, always.  
  
Judith, of course, knew about the man in the basement. He had been there as long as she could remember, and going anywhere near his little window by the stairs was one of the first things she could recall had been forbidden from her. One of the very first things.  
  
But then she’d got curious.  
  
And when she got curious enough, she forgot to be afraid.  
  
Besides, the man in the basement always seemed so sad.  
  
Negan his name was. He was a bad man that had been locked away after the war but Judith thought he had kind eyes.  
  
And then, one day, she’d tiptoed her way into the basement were he lived and met the man everyone regarded as a monster, the alpha who’d made the communities cower in fear and dread and reaped through families like grim reaper from one of her brother’s old comics and she’d seen what others couldn’t. The man behind the monster.  
  
And he’d been kind to her.  
  
They got to know each other as time went by, better and better. Judith had questions and Negan had answers. He wasn’t always that eager to answer them, sure, but generally he did so anyway. Even when they talked about his past deeds.  
  
He never lied to her.  
  
Never treated her like she was a kid.  
  
There was one thing Judith hesitated to ask, though. Not because she thought Negan would get mad over it – or sad – but because she didn’t really understand it herself.  
  
She was an omega, like her father. But unlike her father, who – like the most of the adult people she knew – had been dormant most of his adult life, she’d been born with all of her enhanced senses intact and was able to smell, hear and see better than any of the adults who’d only just awakaned after the Turn.  
  
All the children born after the Turn were like her and the adults sometimes weren’t able to keep up.  
  
There were exceptions like Negan, Daryl and the King. They were born untamed in families that lived outside the norms of the old society.  
  
Negan had abandoned the lifestyle of his family early on and had been going dormant when the Turn happened - he’d told her about this himself, eager to share a bit of his life before becoming Negan – but about Daryl Judith wasn’t so sure. She could tell he was like Negan and her and the other children, but she didn’t really know anything about his life before he met Rick.  
  
Negan knew something but wouldn’t speak of it.  
  
_”You should probably ask your Uncle about that.”_  
  
That was an option, yes, but then she’d have to tell him how she knew so much about the untamed in the first place and she couldn't really tell him about her talks with Negan now, could she?  
  
No. No she couldn’t. Daryl wouldn’t understand. In that regard he was too much like Michonne, Judith’s mother. But there was still something Judith really needed to hear, to understand, and only Negan was there to answer him.  
  
Seeing Daryl again after bringing Connie and her group to Alexandria was really the last push that made her ask the question she’d been pondering on for the longest of time, and now she thought she had the words for it.  
  
”Why do you smell like Uncle Daryl?”  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued.


	2. The Unwanted Bond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Negan answers Judith's question.

  
”Why do you smell like Uncle Daryl?” Judith asked.  
  
She was sitting on the grass by Negan’s window with her school books open in front of her.  
  
Now usually, she’d be sitting on the stairs where people could see her and all that but so few were outside that evening she’d felt safe to come and sit a bit closer (Negan had told her not to come inside the basement after she’d almost gotten caught there by Gabriel).  
  
It was nicer like this. She liked Negan’s familiar scent, even the parts of it that were purely his own. But yeah, there really was some Daryl in there, too, and she couldn’t for the life of her understand why.  
  
”You can smell that?” Negan asked after being silent for long enough for Judith to think he wouldn’t say anything.  
  
”Well, yeah”, she said. ”I have a nose, you know.”  
  
Negan chuckled at that, sounding more weary than anything else. ”That you do”, he agreed, smiling. ”But I’m not sure I’m the one you should be asking about this.”  
  
_Go ask your Uncle_ , he was saying. _Go to Daryl_.  
  
But Daryl wasn’t here anymore.  
  
”Negan, please?”  
  
Judith thought she heard Negan’s heart beating faster than usual and she wondered if he was nervous. The problem with enhanced senses was the lack of understanding what they were saying when there’d been no one to teach her how to interpret them when she’d been little.  
  
”Okay”, Negan finally said, settling to sit down on his bed. ”Okay. I can tell you some of what happened, at least my own part in it. You comfortable up there?”  
  
”Yeah.”  
  
”Right, yes. Well, why do I smell like Daryl. The reason why I smell like him and he like me is because we had an...accident of sorts the first time we met. You remember how we met?”  
  
”Um, yeah. You took him hostage.”  
  
”That I did”, Negan said, gently. ”After killing Abraham and Glenn I took Daryl away from your father to teach them both a lesson. Only, it didn’t really work out like that. You see... your Uncle was a stubborn little thing. And he had guts and I immediately took a liking to him. I could tell he was untamed, like me – I mean, it was pretty obvious from the get go – but I was careless. I think we’d both forgotten and later when he stood up to me there was a moment when it all just – clicked. We bonded purely by accident.”  
  
”You mean you-” Judith didn’t know how to say what she wanted, she wasn’t even sure she’d understood. "So... did you bite him?”  
  
Negan huffed, but again, he didn’t seem very amused. ”Fuck no. It was a close call but no, I didn’t bite him. The whole thing surprised us both and that frigging Dwight witnessed it all but I never got around to ask him if he even understood what had happened. Daryl drove him away after the war, or so I was told. Maybe he suspected something too, wanted him to keep his mouth shut. Plus there was that whole Denise thing... I don’t know. The thing is – we vowed to never speak of it to anyone.”  
  
Negan’s voice was growing softer of all things, like he was smiling. Judith looked down but couldn’t see the man’s face.  
  
”Never speak of it, never take advantage. Not even to save a life. He would have been able to tell where I was whenever he wanted but it was the same for me. The bond we formed was only partial 'cause we never, you know, _sealed the deal_ , so it was easy to lock away, easy to ignore. He didn’t want anyone to know, not after what I’d done to his people. He was ashamed, angry. I was too, for my own reasons. So we acted like nothing ever happened.”  
  
”But…” Judith frowned. ”The war – the war happened _after_ that. If one of you had died-”  
  
”The other would most likely have died too. I know. He didn’t care. I didn’t care. It was only later, when I’d been imprisoned when I thought about telling Rick. I didn’t. And then _he_ died. And Daryl…”  
  
And then Daryl had left.  
  
This wasn’t something Judith could actually remember, but she’d been told about it many times. She met Daryl again later, when she was old enough to tell him she had missed him. She remembered him only barely, but even so, she knew she had missed him dearly.  
  
”When your daddy died”, Negan started, having at some point returned to his usual place by the window and was looking at her now, gaze dark and soft at the same time. ”It was really hard for Daryl to take. My state of mind wasn’t that much better at the time so my memories are a bit fussy but I could feel he was grieving. I think it was at that time the bond awakaned - again, you could say, by accident. We were too broken to care either way. But we got better as years passed by. And Daryl never shut it off again.”  
  
”How come?”  
  
Negan shrugged. ”You’re gonna have to ask him yourself, sweetheart. I haven’t seen him in years.”  
  
Yeah, Daryl was willing to talk about Negan if that was what Judith wanted but he hadn’t been to see him once since the imprisonment. Even though, technically, Negan was his alpha. The accidental alpha he’d never wanted.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued.


End file.
